About those new toilet ads on Muni buses

This is the best looking toilet in the batch of new public health posters (Courtesy Better World Advertising)

They brought you the Healthy Penis, the 6-foot-tall costumed character that appears around town to promote syphilis awareness. They brought you the web-site 100yearsofsex.org to celebrate the centennial of their sexual health clinic.

Those funny folks at the Department of Public Health are at it again, creating a new public awareness campaign that’s certainly eye-catching and humorous – but definitely not sexy.

Muni riders are being treated to some new posters on buses featuring photographs of third-world toilets – you know, the kind that’s just a porcelain hole in the ground with no toilet paper. “Don’t spend your vacation hugging this,” the posters read.

The department’s communicable disease division wants anybody traveling to a developing country this holiday season to ensure their vaccinations are up-to-date. Somewhat surprisingly, it’ s not just your standard vacationers the department is targeting, but also folks from those countries living here who are visiting family back home.

Pamela Axelson, a nurse who helped found the department’s Adult Immunization & Travel Clinic, said San Francisco residents who grew up in Central America, the Philippines, Southeast Asia and elsewhere often wrongly assume they’re still naturally immune to diseases including malaria, yellow fever, Hepatitis A and typhoid.

“They’ve been here for 20 years or 30 years, and they’ve lost any immunity they might have had,” she said. “They’re much more susceptible than they think they are.”

Even bacteria in food and water in their homelands can be problematic – hence the toilet ads. Axelson said a quick visit to the clinic at 101 Grove Street should be on anybody’s travel checklist.

One question: if the public health department, which deals with life-and-death issues, can be so playful, why can’t other departments? There’s gotta be a funny side to potholes, Muni buses and planning. Right?